I’m making the gradual move to more and more open source software. Recently I have been using Mozilla Firefox (brilliant) for web browsing, Thunderbird (works just fine, and pretty good on the junk mail) for email and a Mozilla plug-in for my calendar (still pretty raw, but I only use it for keeping appointments). And just this week, I’ve committed myself to making the full on move to Open Office for most of the other functions I use my PC for, mostly word processing and the odd spreadsheet and powerpoint. I want to do this because I believe that Open …
From this month’s Harper’s Index: Chance that an American adult believes that “politics and government are too complicated to understand”: 1 in 3 Chance that an American who was home-schooled feels this way: 1 in 25 Harper’s quotes a new research study from the National Home Education Research Institute as the source.
From a posting on the Tomorrow’s Professor mailing list on a concept called active waiting: “Active waiting requires the kind of patience that tolerates short-term discomforts (such as temptations to do something else more immediately rewarding than preparing for teaching) in order to gain longer-term rewards (e.g., students who learn more). Active waiting means subduing the part of yourself that admonishes you to put off thoughts of teaching improvements until you are completely caught up on other things. Active waiting, surprisingly, means being able to do two or more things at once (e.g., preparing for teaching during the little openings …
A gem shared by John Engle on the OSLIST, and keeping right in line with some recent thinking on action: Silence is the measure of the power to act; that is, a person never has more power to act than he has silence. Anyone can understand that to do something is far greater than to talk about doing it. If, therefore, a person has a plan or idea and is fully resolved to carry it out, he does not need to talk about it. What he talks about in connection with the proposed action is what he is most unsure …
In Open Space Technology meetings, action plans begin with baby steps. In the action planning phase of an Open Space event, I ask participants to identify key projects that need to be started or ideas that need to be moved forward. In order to focus small, self-organized workteams, I distribute a small form that helps to capture immediate next steps. As a result, I am always looking for questions to focus planning groups on concrete collaboration. I found a few today at Reforming Project Management Theory and Practice: 1. Who could help me with this? 2. What do I have …